


Fall of the Sparrows

by LittleWriterWitch



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Always Female Stiles Stilinski, Codependency, Dark, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:58:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5491382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleWriterWitch/pseuds/LittleWriterWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does not know now what possessed him to stop. She was a kid, is a kid, despite how much she claims that she isn't. He had come to a screeching halt in the street and threw his door open, just long enough for her to climb in. She was shaking, doe eyes wide, knuckles bone white around her gun as he sped away.<br/>She had been the first to speak, a few miles down the road, "I'm Stiles."<br/>"Chris."<br/>"Are you going to kill me, Chris?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall of the Sparrows

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this quite a while ago. Chris/Stiles is my bread and butter.
> 
> This is an au of all aus. My brain apologizes.

****

She stopped counting the days a few summers ago. It is pointless to keep up with time nowadays. It is not like she has anywhere to be.

The sun is almost blinding as it rises over the stretch of highway. Pink and blue and orange hues color the sky, marred only by the near-grey clouds scattered along the horizon. With a sigh, Stiles flips the passenger-side visor down to shield her eyes.

She had watched sunrises like this with her father once, so many days ago.

“You’re thinking too much again, Stiles.”

Her head snaps up, looking to the side at the driver. Chris. Good, dependent, alcoholic Chris—or, at least, the tags that hang from around his neck say _Chris_. She is not quite sure anymore who is who. Stiles spares him a smile that is more sarcasm than happiness. She toes the shotgun in the floor with the tip of her sneaker, finding a bit of solace in its presence.

“Well, someone has to do the thinking around these parts,” she quips, earning a deep, rumbling chuckle from her companion.

“I resent that!”

They return to their usual silence, and she turns to look out the passenger window. The sun is a bit higher now, though only slightly, reflecting in sharp patterns off of the sand.

She remembers when this desert was grassy fields and flowers, crops and… thriving. The land seems to be withering away, only barely alive, weak and sick like the rest of the world that is left living.

They pass a farmhouse along the highway. For a moment and only a moment, Stiles indulges in imagining what the house may have looked like before the Plague. She can almost see it as she closes her eyes…

Children play on a fresh, green lawn before a little white house. A farmer comes home to see his family after a long day of sowing the fields. A mother calls from the door for her children to come inside before the sun sets. The scene flourishes, breathing with colors now lost, and, for a moment, everything seems right in the world.

Stiles opens her eyes in the next second, and reality hits her with all the force of a punch to the gut. The front door is wide open, its blood-and-dirt-stained wood swinging back and forth in the dusty gale. The windows are partially boarded, glass broken—did they have time to prepare? Did they even have a chance to fight back? At the mouth of the porch lays an infected dog. It rears its head and gazes at the passing car, half-rotted jowls pulling back in a snarl that is too far away for the survivor to hear.

She turns away from the window, leaning back against the worn leather seat.

_Imagination gets you nowhere these days._

\---

Sometimes, they are lucky.

Today is one of those days. They make it down the highway without too much hassle. They find a motel that still has running water and only a few infected. A boy that looks no more than nine and a man Chris thinks could have been his father. He takes care of them before Stiles can warn him of their approach.

He does not miss the way she looks at the body of what once a child, but he says nothing as he ushers her into the nearest room.

Sleeping in one bed is the safest option.

Chris likes to use that as his excuse for laying down beside her, for letting her curl into his side for the night.

_If she’s closer, he can protect her. If she’s closer, he can keep her **safe**_.

Stiles is peaceful when she sleeps, her mind far away from the rotting world they wander in. Her breathing is even, her body still. She does not snore or toss or turn. She stays curled up, half-on Chris with her arm tucked around his midsection.

The hotel room is silent, save the soft sounds of their breathing.

Chris does not sleep most of the night. He lays on what is supposed to be his half of the bed, silent and unmoving. He slips in and out of consciousness as the darkness progresses, resting his body but not quite his mind. At the softest of sounds, the soldier is wide awake once again, prepared for defense against whatever the next oncoming enemy may be.

The rifle leans against the nightstand beside him.

He supposes he is lucky that he has not had to use it in an ambush yet.

He takes the half nearest to the door, always.

Silent, waiting, holding the girl tucked against him.

\---

They steal their first car in Nevada. A broken radiator was all it took to stop them. The entire switch to the little hybrid takes only two minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Chris has the driver door open before Stiles can even open the trunk of the Chevy. There are no infected to be seen, but they can never be too careful. The keys lay in the driver’s seat—that coupled with the blood on the dash and the baby carrier a few yards from the vehicle, Stiles thinks of a mother pulled from the open door.

Perhaps she was bitten and got away with her baby. Maybe she killed it. Maybe in self-interest, she threw the carrier at an infected and the baby died quickly, like the lucky ones.

Stiles’ stomach lurches as she puts the ammunition in the back seat of the hybrid.

_Stop thinking, start acting. You’re thinking too much._

Gas jugs, food, blankets, water—she has everything loaded up by the time Chris spots the first infected. Fifteen feet up the bend of the road and closing in with its stumbling gait. Stiles raises her shotgun, aims, and shoots once.

The infected falls and does not get back up.

They are on the road again within four minutes of stopping. Stiles sits rigid in the passenger seat. Chris flashes her a half-smile, but she does not have it in her to return the gesture.

“You okay over there, Poison Oakley?”

Silence.

“You can’t ignore me forever, you know…”

More silence. Her hands tighten around the barrel of the shotgun.

“I’ll leave you be, then—”

“What happened to them?”

Chris glances at her, only for a moment, before turning his attention back to the road as they turn onto the interstate. “What are you talking about?”

Stiles watches him from her seat, not missing a beat. She sees the way his hands grip the steering wheel. She notices how his shoulders tense. He knows what she is talking about.

“What happened to your family, Chris?”

A pregnant silence falls between them as the desert passes by.

“The same thing that happened to the rest of the world.”

\--

He remembers the first day that he met her, all the way back in California. It was the second week since the Infection had been brought to American shores, and all hell was breaking loose all over the nation. The news told stories every day of "disease-induced cannibalism." The government told people to stay in their homes, to not worry, that _everything is under control_.

Chris has been in the middle of war zones before, crawling in bloodstained sand with a rifle and praying that he won't meet something none-too-friendly buried beneath. He has seen war firsthand, has lost more friends than he can count to enemy forces and friendly fire. He knew when he came back that he left a part of himself on the battlefield. He knew that the man he brought home to his wife and baby was not the man that left them two years before.

War had hardened him, molded him into something akin to a machine.

Within a week of the Infection reaching Los Angeles, it had spread like wildfire up the west coast. He had thought that they could be safe, that he could protect his family. He was wrong.

He had went out that day for food. Foraging. Nothing was safe now, and he took what he could find from the already-raided stores. He ignored what he could, kept moving, remembering his purpose. Crime was rampant in the streets, morality gone with the oncoming doom--murders on street corner, girls being pulled into alleyways never to come out, theft in every store.

California was a combat zone, but that was just fine for Chris. He had dealt with his fair share of combat.

What he came home to was not what he had left behind. The front door was open, unbarred, an unwelcomed sight. Chris had dropped the bags he carried and held his rifle tight. His stomach dropped, his heart hardened with the adrenaline coursing through his system.

The thing he found in the nursery was no longer his wife. The bloody swath of pink cloth that had once been a dress was no longer his little Allison.

Chris had walked out of the house shaken, and emptied his stomach contents onto the pavement. He welcomed the acidic burn in his throat, embraced the physical pain. He needed the agony. He needed to concentrate.

He took the SUV from the garage and packed up his supplies; he had no reason to stay now. He needed to get out of California, and fast. He had expected to leave, to run away.

_When you cannot face the enemy, retreat. Plan. Recoup._

Ten minutes into the ride, he saw her. She was running like her life depended on it, stumbling ahead, shotgun in hand. She saw him at about the same time he saw _why_ she was running. A small group of Infected were behind her, running as well, uncoordinated and pushed solely by hunger.

He does not know now what possessed him to stop. She was a kid, _is_ a _kid_ , despite how much she claims that she isn't. He had come to a screeching halt in the street and threw his door open, just long enough for her to climb in. She was shaking, doe eyes wide, knuckles bone white around her gun as he sped away.

She had been the first to speak, a few miles down the road, "I'm Stiles."

"Chris."

"Are you going to kill me, Chris?"

He actually looked at her then, and the thought ran through his mind. He had seen enough loss for one day. "As long as you don't try to off me, no."

A smile pulled at her lips, weak but genuine, as she pushed sweat-dampened brown hair to the side. “Good."

\---

Stiles wakes up to Chris shaking her.

Her body is still twitching, still caught in the gnarled fingers of her nightmare. Her mouth is dry, her throat sore.

She wonders how long she had been screaming before he decided to wake her.

"Are you okay?" The concern in his voice is real, as real as anything can be in this world. She nods silently, clasping her hands over her chest as if she can somehow force her heart to slow.

"It was just a bad dream," she murmurs, her voice slightly cracked even to her own ears. She feels the wetness in her eyelashes, the tears that threatens to spill over onto her cheeks. Quickly, with the back of her hand, she dabs it away.

"Anything I can do?" he asks gently, glancing away from the road to look at her with those dark eyes. She looks back--what had those eyes seen before?

"You can't end this."

"Everything has to end eventually."

She scoffs under her breath and turns away from him. She knows that his hopefulness is not for the sake of his own benefit. She _knows_ he only says it to bring up her spirits.

_She knows how afraid he is of being alone, because she feels the exact same way_.

A moment later, a quarter of a mile away from the last words, she looks at him with that same, sad smile.

"Even if it does end, let's keep driving."


End file.
